Every device is vulnerable to security breaches, which can be perpetrated by actors, e.g., either from among members of its internal network, from its external network (internet), and/or by actors with direct physical access to the device. Over the past few years, there has been an increase in frequency and ingenuity of attacks on digital devices, which demonstrate that existing measures can be insufficient in their protective capabilities.
Security breaches can concern substantially every entity in the modern world, including governments, financial institutions, large corporations, small businesses, and/or private people. Such breaches can include data theft, data corruption, theft of intellectual property, physical sabotage, identity theft, blackmail, propaganda, public shaming, etc. Over the past few years, attacks on digital devices in particular have become more increased and varied, further indicating that existing measures can be insufficient in their protective capabilities. These attacks can be perpetrated by actors from military groups, government funded groups, crime syndicates, private people, etc., and can be motivated by political reasons, financial reasons, religious reasons, personal reasons, etc. These attacks can originate from anywhere in the world, and they can happen quickly; e.g., more quickly than a typical human can reasonably respond.
Today, devices are typically protected by a combination of firewall, anti-spyware, and anti-virus software, which have been shown to be largely ineffective against continually evolving modern threats and actors. For example, current security software solutions can often require constant rules, and are infrequently maintained, which can cause irrelevant security checks due to changing threats. These tools can also be limited in their response to threats, as they can only affect the incoming and outgoing network packets, without having the ability to implement any intermediary layers of protection.
Other current security protocols attempt to protect devices by restricting users to use under-privileged computer accounts, which are often inconvenient and can stifle productivity. Some current security software solutions try educating those who use the devices and attempt to restrict their behavior. This method of defense can depend on unreliable and often unpredictable or inconsistent factors, for example, some users are inept and/or irrational, some do not understand how to follow instructions, and some forget and/or refuse to change their behavior when interacting with their devices. Another method of protection is blacklisting the use of certain protocols. This method typically does not protect from unknown protocols, viruses, malware, and/or harmful software such as those which are embedded in hardware and/or in operating systems. Some current security solutions can employ deep packet scanning and/or statistics to discriminate between packets, which is inefficient and time consuming.
It can be desirable, therefore, to provide security systems and methods that help protect devices and systems from attacks, e.g., in the form of viruses, malware, spyware, backdoors, and/or hacking. It can further be desirable to provide systems and methods that can prevent (or substantially prevent) a malevolent insider from mounting a successful espionage and/or sabotage campaign and/or from downloading and/or exporting data. It can further be desirable to provide systems and methods that can thwart attempts to collect network communications via sniffing, and can also help prevent a benevolent actor, who is legitimately connected to a network and/or using a device on which such systems and methods are implemented, from revealing information to unauthorized parties due to social engineering and/or negligence.